"Shut that up! I'm trying to sleep. I'm calling the cops!" yelled Mr. Jerico from inside his apartment, but his pleas fell on deaf ears as Graham's mind was filled by the white noise of his confusion.

With all his might, he resumed his banging, punching the wooden door as if it were his mightiest opponent. Something inside Graham knew that his solace lay behind that door, just like it did several years ago. He was not thinking. He was not rationalizing. His feet had moved on their own, bolting out of Linda's house one step at a time.

Never in his twenty-eight years of life had he ever felt so desolated. The family that had given him everything had desolated Graham, playing him for a fool. Drawing circles around him. Taunting him from the shadows. Was he just a toy to them? A cat whose owner dangles threads of yarn to play with?

Questions upon questions kept piling up in his mind, all of them adding a layer of fury and impotence that brought tears to his eyes, waiting for an opportunity to pour out. The more he thought about his situation, the more strength he put into his knocking. His knuckles were already bloody, but it did not deter him from tearing down the door.

Graham had thought the idea of a piece of wood and metal locks as a means of safety laughable. Real evil doesn't bother with knocking like he was doing. Real evil kicked down doors. Real evil destroyed lives. But now, in his most fragile state, the only thing he craved was to enter that room, lock the door, and bare his soul, to let the locks keep the evil at bay.

'But you are death, the ultimate evil', thought Graham. And he was right. His soul was tainted and broken. He committed a cardinal sin, and the burden of that would follow him for the rest of his life. He could not escape from himself, even if he wanted to, even if he found solace on the business end of a gun.

The blood seeping through his knuckles stained the door, mixing and matching with the natural swirls and patterns of the wood. In that brown canvas, mixed in crimson, he saw the face of death: panic, yelling, pleading, failure.

At some point in his mindful rambling, he began to yell; a guttural scream that came deep from his diaphragm, like a teapot releasing pressure by steam. A scream that did not register in his ears.

He could feel the air flow; he could feel the vibration in his head, but the only sound was the white background pitch, gently prodding him into the void.

It wasn't until he heard her voice that the noise was pierced, bringing him back to the moment at hand.

"Jesus Christ, I'm up! Dammit! Who is it?" Anna yelled on the other side of the door, followed by rapid footsteps closing in on the door.

Graham's breath caught in his throat as a very pissed Anna opened the threshold. Black bags hung from her bloodshot eyes, making her already green eyes pop out even more. By the looks of her bedhair, and smeared makeup, she was just returning from her night shift. She was even wearing her red-and-white dinner uniform.

"What the fuck are you doing here?!" she exclaimed, crossing her arms in front of her. Graham reached into himself to find appropriate words or even an explanation, but he was not even aware why he was there. He was just there and that's it. His feet had brought him there.

But his eyes knew better because as soon as he laid eyes on her, he began to weep. His chest contracted into hiccups. His knees buckled beneath. He couldn't even take two steps into the room.

Truth was, his will had run out.

"Holy-," said Anna, trying his best to break Graham's fall with her arms, but he was too heavy, and his knees absorbed the brunt of the impact. But he did not even flinch.

From below, Anna looked like a holy virgin, with her arms outstretched, and the light-bulb behind her forming a golden halo around her head.

'Will she wash away my sins, like she did before?' thought Graham, but Anna only answered by pulling him up by the armpits.

"Just got off a night of dealing with drunks..." she muttered under her breath, ushering Graham's quivering body to the old couch on which he used to sleep.

Graham couldn't understand why of all the things he could be doing right now; his body chose to go weep in front of Anna. Maybe it was his body remembering all those years ago, how he became frustrated after a particularly long case, and how she seemed to make his problems go away.

Anna quickly ran towards the small corner of the apartment she called a kitchen, retrieving a bottle of milk and a bottle of Captain Morgan rum. She already knew what to do. Pouring a glass of milk, she placed it for a few seconds in the microwave, just enough to make it warm. Two dashes of rum made it the perfect cocktail to soothe a crying Graham.

In no time, Graham was holding a glass of warm milk, an action which by itself helped him steady his breathing. The taste of spiced dairy brought memories of a long lost childhood. Peaceful, but dreadful times.

Anna sat next to him on the couch in Indian position, staring right at Graham as he slowly downed his milk between hiccups. Each gulp calmed him down a peg, and by the last gulp, he was mostly sniffling on short breaths.

"Did I ever tell you why this calms me down?" commented Graham, speaking for the first time since he came. Anna perked up after hearing his cracked voice, adopting a more soothing and motherly tone.

"No...tell me."

Graham closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath. His heart was wild and crazy, and truth was, he did not even know why he wanted to share that particular piece of information. He just wanted to communicate with her. "When I was a baby, my mother used to put liquor on my bottle to keep me quiet. She couldn't stand my crying. I spent the best part of my first two years blackout drunk."

Anna reached for Graham's hand but decided against it midway through. "I'm sorry," she said, casting her eyes downwards.

"Why? You had nothing to do with it," said Graham as a matter-of-factly.

Silence, yet again.

Graham took a second look at Anna and realized she was a bit different from the last time he saw her. She was...grayer. Her skin had a sickly hue, and she kept scratching her arms. Her hair was wilted and straws-ish. She did not look healthy in the slightest.

Back when they first met, she was a vibrant young girl, full of promise and will, but in a bad place. She had lost her mother, her only living relative. Graham was blaming himself for Tracy Esposito's death. They were both grieving. Equally damaged. They both fed each other's grief in unhealthy ways. He provided her with access to drugs and supervision. She provided motherly love and affection. Vices and toxicity, they were peddlers of both. And now, because of his enabling, she was reduced to a shadow of herself. Another life ruined by Graham Dunne.

"Are you okay? You don't look too good yourself," said Graham, placing the glass on the floor of the room. Without his care, the apartment had turned into a pigsty. Anna was not the cleanest person by nature.

"Yeah..." she responded in a whisper."I've been trying to clean up after myself. Put my act together. I threw away all my pills but...it's hard. My body ain't taking this well."

"I see," said Graham.

"Well, I don't," she replied, laughing at herself in self-deprecation. "Did you know that abusing those pills can take away your ability to recognize some colors? I can't see the color green anymore."

"That's sad," said Graham, feeling as guilt crept down his spine.

"Yep. The grass is always grayer on the other side now, I guess. If we ever get out of this hellish winter."

Graham wiped some leftover tears from his eyes. He felt pathetic for burdening Anna when she had her own problems to deal with. "Look, I'm sorry to bother you. I don't know why I came here. At least I want to ask for forgiveness, for cuffing you to the heater and all."

Anna scratched her arms harder, leaving red marks on her white skin. "Look, it's okay. It wasn't fair for me to ask you to take care of a junkie, even less if that junkie was me. That day I felt like crap. I was reduced to a common hood rat."

Graham opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by Anna's hand on his lips.

"Mom wouldn't want to see me like this. So...frail, and weak, and pathetic. She would want me to move on. It was a wake-up call. If I keep abusing this, who knows what might happen? I stopped having dreams when I sleep-if I sleep, since my sleeping schedule has been messed up since I quit, and...well. There is that, I guess?"

He was speechless. While he wanted to have a resolution with her, Anna opened up to him in ways she never had.

"What I'm trying to say is, will you return?" she asked, taking Graham's hand in hers. She was cold and moist, and her skin felt coarse. "I mean, not as before. I'm weak. I'll relapse. My body is screaming for a pill right now, and I need a caretaker, someone who isn't afraid of cuffing me to the heater if needed."

"Yes," he blurted without thinking. Graham felt a weight off his shoulders. If he did right by Anna, maybe he wouldn't have another casualty on his hands.

Could he still do right by this case?

"With that out of the way," she said with a smile that brought back a bit of life to her dry body, "tell me what's on your mind."

"Uh?"

"I doubt you came here just to get some milk and a good cry. Tell me what's on your mind."

What could I tell you? Thought Graham, that I murdered an innocent person? That I've been played by everyone? That I don't know what I want anymore?

And that last one seemed a good enough answer.

"I don't know what I want anymore," said Graham, hunching over himself.

Anna rubbed the back of Graham's hand with her thumb. It was the best she could do to support him. Silently, Graham understood that he should continue talking.

"I'm kinda torn between what's right and what's best."

"How so?"

"Well," he said, mimicking her movement with his thumb, "If I follow orders, something very bad can happen to an innocent man. His life would be in my hands."

"That would be what's best?" she asked. "For who?"

"Me, I guess, because if I disobey orders, I will be punished. Badly."

"I see," she said, releasing Graham's grip. "I think is pretty simple, really. Do the right thing."

"It's not that simple."

"It is," she said. "You are playing with two lives here. Yours and theirs. It's easy to throw someone else under the bus to save your skin, but is not the honorable thing to do."

Anna stood up from the couch, using the entirety of her five ft to intimidate the sitting Graham. "You're not God to decide whose lives you're gonna ruin. You can only gamble with what's yours. If your actions endanger the life of somebody else, they are wrong. Only you must be accountable for your actions. Why let others pay your broken dishes?"

What she was saying made a lot of sense, yet Graham thought of it as shortsighted, as well as mighty ironic. It was literally his life on the line. If he chose to go against the Family, it was most likely he would be done for.

'How would I begin to do something like that?' he thought.

Not alone, a voice told him inside his head. Not alone.

"I must confess, I don't usually accept dates with policemen, but with you, I'll make an exception," said Gabriela playfully, taking a sip of the Caramel Mocca. Like her, it was overly sweet, with just a hint of vanilla.

Graham was slightly taken aback by her bashfulness, making an uncharacteristic pink tone show on his cheeks. "I assure you, I'm not here on a date. I want to discuss a few things in the case."

"Bummer, I haven't had a cute boy like you ask me out since I moved here."

"Mind if I record this?" said Graham, placing his recorder on the table. Gabriela went stiff, wiping the smirk out of her face.

"Spoilsport," she said, giving Graham a raspberry, "but I guess it's okay. If this is about the William boy, I swear-"

"He's innocent," interrupted Graham, taking Gabriela by surprise.

"Y...yes?" she said. Her groove was completely thrown off.

"At least, I believe so, yeah. You were right. The tapes were tampered with."

Gabriela took another sip of her coffee. "How so?"

"The hotel purposely tampered with the tapes to throw suspicion away from Henry White. Why? That, I don't know."

"Aha! I knew it!" said Gabriela, clapping her hands like a child. "I knew there was something more than fishy there!"

"Yes. Thing is, we don't know why or how."

"The whole thing doesn't even make that much sense."

"Why?"

"Well," she said, tapping the rim of her coffee, "If the hotel wanted to throw off Mr. White as a suspect, why add the tape in the first place?"

That was a valid question, one to which he did not have an answer to.

"Maybe," she said, "they secretly wanted you to notice, so you could pursue it?"

"That's-" so stupid, he wanted to say, but wasn't that what Dara had been doing this whole time? Leaving breadcrumbs for Graham to follow. But there was a flaw in that logic.

"The one who ordered the tampering was Murray Prendergast. If he had anything to do with this, the secret is in the grave with him."

Gabriela smacked her lips in annoyance. "Crap. We finally had a lead."

"But, I understand that Mr. Wolfe was Mr. Prendergast's nephew. Could he have thrown him under the bus like that? Because if he tampered with the tapes..."

"I get you. But maybe that was his plan all along. Nobody would suspect a thing."

They both remained quiet.

"That would actually solve a lot of things," said Gabriela.

"How so?"

"Well," she said, watching left to right, "I've been digging into Mr. Prendergast a bit. Don't you find it odd that both him and his wife, and Mrs. Geber all died the same way? A car crash of an influential member of a company? Accident. Another car crash of an influential member of the same company? I find it hard to believe that it's a coincidence."

"Okay," he said, just to give her some feedback.

"See, Mrs. Clara Prendergast owned a substantial amount of shares in Glocal Pharmaceuticals, or at least, she had a lot of shares to her name. We believe that Murray Prendergast was using her name as a means to mask his level of investment in the company. She's even registered with her maiden name, Clara Wolfe."

"So..."

"So," she continued, "he would've benefitted greatly if, say, Glocal were to acquire Geber Labs. My theory is, he broke a deal with Glocal in exchange for stocks or a bigger salary or something. He just had to make Henry disappear and BANG! The deal was done. Of course, he failed, and killed Mrs. Geber by mistake."

Graham thought hard about how to respond. There was something missing in her logic, but he was not the one who would point it out. "That's a good theory, except for two things."

"Which are...?"

"One," he said, raising a finger. "If he tried to kill Henry, why would he go out of his way to protect him?"

"Well..."

"And two," he interrupted, raising another finger, "he is dead now. And as you said, it wasn't a coincidence. Surely, whoever killed Zinet also killed the Prendergasts."

"Oh, so you think so too!" she said with a smile. "And you're right. That means we are missing an element. Someone else."

Graham's eyes immediately shot up, something that Gabriela didn't miss.

"Well, we have time to investigate. I'm sure that you're sniffing around for clues," said Gabriela. "Speaking of clues: have you requested the fingerprint analysis on that car?"

Graham had completely forgotten about that. I should've written it down, he thought in hindsight. "No, I haven't."

"Neat! You can do it right now."

"Sure?" said Graham, a little confused with her perky demeanor. He took out his cellphone, dialing the police operator number. After a few minutes of boring telephonic bureaucracy, a voice on the other line confirmed that they were talking with central.

"Put it on speakers," whispered Gabriela. Graham complied.

"Yes, Detective, what can I do for you?" said a jovial voice on the other side.

"I would like to request an evidence check of a case."

"Certainly. It says here that you are currently assigned to only one case. Which is the file number for the case? This is for confirmation purposes."

"Twenty-seven, dash, two, two, niner, eight, seven. Geber, Zinet."

"Confirmed! What would you require?"

Graham saw Gabriela from the corner of his eye and she was smirking playfully. There was something wrong here.

"I want to ask for a fingerprint analysis. I need you to check under the car and around the co-pilot door."

"Of course. Just a minute please," said the man, but it wasn't three seconds of silence until he spoke again. "I'm afraid we cannot fulfill your request. We do not possess that car."

"What? What do you mean? That car is evidence."

"Our team checked the car for signs of malfunction and has deemed it irrelevant to the case. Every discovery—or lack thereof—was archived in the file. The wreckage was given to a scrapyard."

Graham went pale in an instant, so much so that he missed Gabriela bobbing up and down in her seat. "That's impossible. I have the report, and it says that the brakes were cut."

"Our reports do not indicate anything of the sort. You must have been mistaken."

"No, I'm not," said Graham, losing his patience. "You guys sent us this case because of foul play."

"We did not remit this case to the D-4 precinct. Captain Dara Lynch requested this file to be given to her."

Graham became speechless. Was this case even real?

"It seems there has been some discrepancy between evidence here. Would you like to file a formal complaint?"

"Yes!" yelled Gabriela, "We would like to file a complaint!"

Graham quickly turned off the call, pushing the invasive Gabriela away. "What the hell?! Why did you do that?"

She only giggled, pinning her eyes on Graham. "Say, Graham... What do you know about the Lynch family?"